The Dinosaur Museum News

A new study has shown that Spinosaurs – the enormous sail-backed theropods made famous by Jurassic Park 3 – spent a great deal more of their life in and around lakes and rivers than originally thought. Spinosaurus has conical, unserrated teeth that suggest a diet of fish. Now a study of the ratios of the oxygen isotopes in the teeth and bones of spinosaurs shows that they compare very favourably with semi-aquatic animals such as hippos and crocodiles. 

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The Easter Egg Hunt with a difference is being held at the Dinosaur Museum in Dorchester over the Easter weekend. The all new Great Dinosaur Easter Egg Hunt involves children in actually hunting throughout the museum to spot the dinosaur eggs on display. As well as this, children have to discover the answers to various clues in the Dinosaur Mystery and whilst seeking out the museum’s dinosaur eggs.
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Robotic dinosaurs have appeared in Oxford Street in the heart of London. They are populating a site that is awaiting development opposite Selfridges. The animatronic dinosaurs which include examples of Velociraptor, Diplodocus and Tyrannosaurus rex move their heads, tails and arms. They are set within a Jurassic scene of trees and a watering hole. Continue Reading…

Strange death pits have been discovered in China containing a total of 18 small raptor-type dinosaur remains. The dinosaurs were stacked on top of one another like pancakes in three pits. Scientists at the Royal Tyrell Museum, in Drumheller in Canada, have determined that the 1.5 metre deep pits are actually the footprints left by a huge sauropod dinosaur. The area was originally muddy and marshy hence the deep footprints. Continue Reading…

A superb site of over 40 sets of dinosaur tracks from a variety of dinosaurs is under threat from erosion by wind and water. The footprints were first discovered in 1997 at Ardley near Bicester in Oxfordshire. Extensive and relatively complete dinosaur trackways are rare in Britain, and consequently Natural England has made the area a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). Continue Reading…

Was it possible that Archosaurs the ancestors of dinosaurs breathed like modern day birds. Unlike mammals, birds have a one-way tube that allows airflow all through the respiratory system. Now it has been discovered that alligators, another member of the Archosaur group, also share this one –way breathing technique, meaning that it goes back at least 246 million years ago. Continue Reading…

New research is revealing how had dinosaurs been able to take care of their teeth they might well have lived a great deal longer. Tyrannosaurids in particular exhibit diseased jawbones, which have been caused by touching or biting each other on the face and thereby passing on infectious diseases. Continue Reading…

New footprints discovered in a quarry in Poland show that the important evolution of fish to four-legged animals was 20 million years earlier than previously thought. The footprints are from about 395 million years ago from the Devonian geological period. Dozens of prints were discovered clearly showing ‘hand’ and ‘foot’ impressions and belonged to a lizard-like animal that could have grown up to 2.5 metres long. This is a key episode in evolution and all further land animals, including the dinosaurs, mammals, and humans, evolve from these early tetrapods.

Several trackways and some individual footprints were discovered in a disused quarry in the Holy Cross Mountains of south-eastern Poland. There are no marks of the body of the animals being dragged on the ground because they would have been partially supported by water. Previously it had been thought that lakes and river deltas were the necessary environment Continue Reading…

Students have managed to sequence approximately 180,000 nucleotides of the DNA code of the Wollemi Pine’s chloroplast genome. The tree has become known as the dinosaur of the plant kingdom. Originally it was only known in its fossil form – Wollemia nobilis. However in 1994 David Noble discovered a previously unknown rainforest canyon in the Wollemi National Park, Australia, which had examples of the living tree. Continue Reading…

Four of the top ten fossil finds for 2009 involved dinosaur stories. Highest at number 5 was the discovery of a carnivorous dinosaur and two large herbivorous dinosaurs in the Australian outback. At number 7 was the discovery of Raptorex kriegsteini – a small ancestor of the mighty T rex. Then at number 8 is the new research that suggested that at least a third of all dinosaur species had never existed. Continue Reading…